Improving health, improving minds, improving lives—three things in a slogan used in 2019 that still work together for Kelly Jo Barnwell as the director of the Anderson County Senior Citizens Program. The OverEasy Exercise to Overcome focuses on staying fit and using a series of exercises to overcome a variety of challenges for seniors.
OverEasy Exercise is a personal business developed by Barnwell that has been offered around Anderson County.
"The program truly is taking research of Alzheimer's prevention to be able to name exercises," Barnwell said. "Use those named exercises in different sequences on the right and left side of the body so that our mind is always engaged with our body."
According to the library schedule online, Tami Zaphiris, a library clerk at the Belton Library, leads an OverEasy Exercise To Overcome class every other Thursday from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.
Trained to lead a class, Zaphiris leads a group of nine on a particular Thursday through a series of movements and exercises. The class at the library is free, and anyone can attend. "We've had 18 at once," she said.
The Anderson County Library System has implemented many things to help draw people to the building. "We have crafts, we have cards, two different kinds of book clubs, and then we're offering the Over Easy classes now," she said. "We also have a children's program and story time every Monday morning. More people have been coming in; our numbers have gone up a lot since January."
One mile away down Blue Ridge Avenue at the Belton Recreation Center, another class exercises in another OverEasy Exercise To Overcome class in the fitness room. Several seniors sway to upbeat music and instruction by Kelly Jo Barnwell, director of the Anderson County Jo Brown Senior Citizen Center.
"I gotta keep my joints moving at my age so I don't get a frozen joint," Bill Eaves, 80, of Anderson County, said.
"It helps so much with my ability, especially with the neck stretches, to drive and see what's coming. I started this class when it opened in 2018, and I was just getting over breast cancer treatments, and it literally helped me get my life back," Gloria Eaves said.
"We have fun, lots of laughs and get rid of those pains," Lisa Fisher said.
The class's name comes from her late mother, Jo Brown, who was director of the Anderson County Senior Citizens Program. "In the early 80s, they just decided to name their exercise. Then, they called it OverEasy. We have taken it to the next level," Barnwell said.
Barnwell explained the program: "So our exercises are named in a different order, depending on which side of the body we're working on, trying to keep them in order so that we recall with our memory skills what we just did. It can be as simple as our hamstring knee cap stretch; it's called fulfilled. And we do fulfilled on our right side. And then we ask them what we need to do our stretch on our left side. They respond, 'Fulfilled! '"
"Our aches, pains, moans, and groans, or the messes and stresses, and fusses and cusses, or the slumps and bumps which always end up in triumph," she said. "As our overcomers say, 'If you don't use it, you lose it.' "
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